Monday 12 April 2010 13.31 EDT
First published on Monday 12 April 2010 13.31 EDT

Bishop Abel Muzorewa, the former prime minister of the short-lived Republic of Zimbabwe-Rhodesia, who has died aged 84, was a religious leader and an unlikely politician. His ambition, he said, had been to do "what Mandela did in South Africa – achieve a political resolution of his country's problems without bloodshed". Alas, he failed.

When Ian Smith declared unilateral independence (UDI) in Rhodesia on 11 November 1965, shockwaves ran across black Africa. With Britain paralysed by the fear of the prime minister, Harold Wilson, that any troops sent to quell the rebellion would refuse to fire on their "kith and kin", it was expected that Smith would be allowed to get away with it. In Ghana, the president, Dr Kwame Nkrumah, began to recruit more men into the army, with the intention of ferrying them secretly to newly independent Zambia, and thence into Rhodesia.

The plan came to nothing, but Nkrumah had seared the Rhodesian issue into the consciousness of the more progressive military officers. They were scandalised that whereas in Kenya, the far less serious Mau Mau uprising had been ruthlessly crushed, Rhodesia was "rewarded" for its rebellion with talks between Wilson and Smith, on HMS Tiger (1966) and HMS Fearless (1968).

When, in 1972, Britain sent the Pearce Commission to Rhodesia to sample opinion on whether the black population would accept independence without majority rule, Africans feared that the British would rig the "referendum", to kowtow to Smith.

At this stage, an obscure Methodist priest called Bishop Abel Muzorewa entered the fray and organised the black population to meet the Pearce Commission members with noisy demonstrations and placards, declaiming "NO! NO! NO!" It worked, and the commission went home and reported that the proposed settlement with Smith was impossible.

Muzorewa was credited with the success of the "no" campaign, and Smith went after him, forcing him into exile in Mozambique. He returned home, to be welcomed by 100,000 people, when the British proposed an all-Zimbabwean independence conference, to be held in Geneva in October 1976. By now, Muzorewa's United African National Council (UANC) had expanded to contain some heavyweights in the independence struggle, including James Chikerema, George Nyandoro and the future chief justice of Zimbabwe Enoch Dumbutshena. So, when Muzorewa appealed to Ghana for funds, the then military leader, General Kutu Acheampong, not only responded generously, but also deputed a senior Ghanaian judge, Robert Hayfron-Benjamin, to be the UANC's constitutional adviser, with myself as the delegation's media relations officer.

Once in Geneva, however, I discover- ed that Muzorewa's hold on his organisation was tenuous. There was a lot of dithering, with decisions being taken and reversed with frequency. After the failure of the Geneva conference, Acheampong brought all the Rhodesian leaders to Accra to try to get them to form a unified group.

It was a useless exercise. Muzorewa spent most of the time in my house, listening to records of the Mormon Tabernacle Choir that he had brought with him. My four-year-old son sat at his side, playing with his shoes.

Eventually, Muzorewa struck out on his own, and reached an "internal settlement" with Smith in 1978, under which Muzorewa became prime minister. But the move could not stop the guerrilla warfare. Nor was the deal recognised by the United Nations. Sanctions on Rhodesia continued. Meanwhile, Muzo- rewa became tainted as an opportunist and a sell-out. The "internal settlement" was seen off, in fact, by the Lancaster House conference, called in London in December 1979, at which agreement was reached on Rhodesia's legal independence. In the elections that followed in 1980, Robert Mugabe's Zimbabwe African National Union (Zanu) won hands down. Muzorewa's party got only three seats. That effectively sealed his political fate.

Muzorewa was born at Umtali (now Mutare) in eastern Rhodesia. He was a premature baby and would not have survived but for the ministrations of a Swedish nurse. The eldest child in a Christian family of nine, he was educated at a village mission school and at the Old Umtali Methodist boarding school.

At the age of 19 Muzorewa started work as a teacher and later studied at seminaries in both Rhodesia and the US, where he took a master's degree at Scarritt College for Christian Workers in Nashville, Tennessee. Back home in 1953, he began to preach and also engaged in political work. He became the first black bishop of his church in 1958.

While still at theological school, Muzorewa was married, in 1951, to Maggie Chigodora, with whom he had five children. She and one of their children predeceased him. He is survived by three sons and a daughter.

•Abel Tendekayi Muzorewa, priest and statesman, born 14 April 1925; died 8 April 2010